With a long, smooth motion, Andrew VanderWeyden slides a planer down the length of one of those foam pieces, sending a cloud of dust into the air. With a few more hours of careful work, this particular piece will be turned into a paddleboard ready to navigate Puget Sound’s waters.

The Bainbridge company is the brainchild of three surfing enthusiasts: Steve Contos, Ben Avery and Andrew VanderWeyden. The trio has been building and repairing surfboards and paddleboards for friends for a couple years, Contos said, but they turned it into a business this spring. So far they’re just been keeping their heads above water amid the initial wave of orders they’ve received.

“We’ve had hair-brained business ideas as long as I can remember,” Contos said. “This is no less hair-brained than all of them, but for whatever reason, this has been so popular, way beyond what we could have imagined. There’s so much demand for it.”

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Steve Contos (left) and Andrew VanderWeyden talk about the process that they use to design and create their custom stand-up paddleboards from pieces of foam.(Photo: MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN)

They’ve modeled their business off the one-man surfboard-crafting shacks up and down the California and Oregon coasts, Contos said, where “the guy who lives up the beach knows the waves that you’re doing.”

Similarly, they’ll shape the custom surfboard or paddleboard that’s best suited to their customer — what kind of water they’ll be in and how they want it to look.

“If they want crazy designs, we’ll make it happen,” said VanderWeyden, the company’s full-time board crafter.

The process of creating one of those boards is a mix of art and science. Once they’ve sawed, shaved and sanded away at one of the foam pieces until it looks like the board they’ve envisioned, it’s moved over to a clean room, where fiberglass cloth is stretched out over the foam and several layers of epoxy are poured over the structure to give it necessary rigidity, VanderWeyden said. It takes just the right mixture of epoxy and hardener to get the glassy surface they’re looking for.

Once a board has dried, it’s tossed in Manzanita Bay for a test run before it’s passed along to its owner.

“It is fun to be able to create something for somebody, and we already know that they’re going to use it and ride it and they’re going to take it anywhere on the water,” VanderWeyden said. “It’s a lucky niche of art and business.”

Custom boards start at around $1,500, Contos said. Once they catch up on their first group of custom orders, they’ll begin to build and sell stock boards, which will sell for less, he said.